


Alley Cat

by darkavenue



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, F/F, i can have another you in a minute matter of fact she'll be here in a minute, powerswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6611107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkavenue/pseuds/darkavenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adrien loses the Chat Noir miraculous. Alya finds it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>   
>    
> 
> 
> (covert art by [larvesta](http://larvesta.tumblr.com/post/153514572449/honestly-i-started-doodling-and-i-couldnt-stop) \+ i have to add a note now to clarify that this was written pre-Sapotis, so please erase everything about Rena Rouge from your brain before reading this.) 

Marble sculptures posed everywhere she looked. Nino, pale white with his mouth open in a silent shout. A few feet away, Chloe and Sabrina clutched each other in a permanent embrace. When Ladybug came closer, she couldn’t help marveling for one unconscious second at Chloe’s fingertips sinking into Sabrina’s sleeve. The marble was sculpted so finely it almost looked like the texture of real fabric, the kind of masterpiece that belongs in the Louvre. Every statue in the hotel lobby was equally beautiful as it was frightening.

 _Focus! You have to catch up to Chat Noir,_ a voice at the back of Ladybug’s mind (that sounded quite like Tikki) reminded her. He called several minutes ago, while she was on patrol, to let her know of the emergency at Le Grand Paris with an akuma victim calling herself Statuette. She flipped open her yoyo to ask where he was now, but only got an error message. If he was unreachable, that meant his transformation had worn off for now. That meant no one was keeping Statuette from leaving the building.

As quick as she could, Ladybug followed the trail of marbleized hotel guests and staff. They led her to an opulent banquet hall that had been all decked out for a gala of some kind. Many tables were flipped over, scattering the floor with broken glass and crushed orchids from the elaborate ornaments at their center. Amongst this mess, she saw a statue backed up against a corner of the hall that made Ladybug’s blood run cold.

“Adrien,” she gasped under her breath, rushing to his side.

His back was pinned against the wall with one hand outstretched, which Ladybug reached for out of instinct. She clasped both hands around his white stone palm, trying to soothe the expression of quiet despair off his face. Or trying to comfort herself.

The sound of a crash pulled Marinette’s attention to a pair of swinging doors along the back wall. She pushed through them, into the silver steel kitchens. A wheeled cart was turned over, with a pile of shattered champagne bottles spilling forth from it. The sparkling liquid flowed across the floor to pool around the stilettoed feet of a life-size ice sculpture. At the squeak of a hinge from the doors closing behind her, the sculpture looked over its shoulder.

Ladybug almost jumped. Statuette was a crystallized woman wearing a suit and a tight bun, every angle of her face and body carved with razor sharp edges.

“Ladybug,” she spoke low. “You’re late to the party.”

Ladybug looked over Statuette’s body for an akumatized accessory. Everything was solid ice, nothing stood out from this distance. 

“It was going to be the peak of sophistication,” Statuette said, remarkably calm compared to previous victims Ladybug had faced. Her rage wasn’t turbulent like most. It was frigid, biting cold. ”Now, should I go after you or the girl?”

A pink mask materialized over her face. Ladybug had to keep her away from the girl who pissed her off at all costs.  With all her force, she threw the yoyo into Statuette’s face. “Come and get me!” 

The akuma victim almost didn’t react, except for an icy glare.

“No. I will take Ladybug first,” she spoke out loud, in defiance to an order Ladybug couldn’t hear. “I’m done with my work being ruined by incompetent fools.”

Statuette raised one arm to point straight at her. In her fingers, she gracefully held a silver fountain pen. The only item on her that wasn’t iced over. _Bingo,_ thought Ladybug, even as she threw herself behind the nearest counter to avoid whatever was being aimed at her. She rolled behind a chopping station just in time to catch a glimpse of a shard of marble crashing against the spot behind where she’d been standing a split second before.

Ladybug threw her hand up to summon Lucky Charm, but another marble bullet hit her palm before she could say the words. With a hiss of pain, she clutched her hand to her stomach and watched in horror as white stone spread over the surface of her armor. It stopped halfway down her forearm, to her relief. Still, her petrified hand could not move.

Statuette rounded the corner and Ladybug sprang to her feet to dodge another shot of marble, dodge again on the other side of the steel counters, and then slip on the pool of spilled champagne. Shards of broken Dom Perignon bottles shattered into fragments beneath her back when her entire body slammed to the floor. Statuette’s aim was already locked on her, Ladybug couldn’t spring to her feet in time to dodge it.

A blur of silver flew overhead, and Statuette’s pen was knocked out of her frosted hand by Chat Noir’s baton. Out of the corner of her eye, Ladybug watched the pen roll underneath a stove. She was already dashing towards Chat Noir, not wanting to waste a single precious second while Statuette was distracted with retrieving the weapon. The baton had swung from the direction of a back door in the kitchen that had been left flung open, which lead to an undecorated, narrow corridor. At the end of the hall, she caught a brief flash of his tail swinging around the corner. _What’s he thinking? We need to formulate a plan_ now _._ Ladybug chased after him with a huff, wondering if he’d come up with something on his own.

“Care to fill me in on what we’re doing, Chat Noir?” Ladybug demanded after rounding the bend at the end of the hallway. 

Like needing to re-read a wonky sentence twice to figure out where an error in it is, it took a moment for her to catch that she wasn’t looking at Chat Noir. It was definitely Chat Noir’s suit, but filled out in a way that he couldn’t possibly. Chat Noir’s ears poking out from a head of long, tousled brown hair. A pair of yellow eyes looking out from behind Chat Noir’s mask.

“What is this?” Ladybug backed away, drawing her weapon.

“Don’t attack me! I’m on your side,” Not-Chat Noir raised her palms as she spoke. 

Ladybug remembered she’d thrown the baton out and not gone back for it. The stranger had no weapon. She kept her yoyo poised to swing anyway. “Explain,” she ordered.

The girl in Chat Noir’s armor smiled at it. Behind her, his tail curled itself into the shape of a heart. “Wow! Ladybug!”

“That doesn’t—Where’s the real Cha—I don’t have time for this. I have to find the boiler room.”

“It’s over this way! I know the staff passageways like the back of my hand.” With a loose beckon, the girl turned her back to Ladybug and jogged down the hall.

Distant steps of icicle stilettos on concrete clacked an ominous rhythm down the hall they’d come through, a pressing confirmation that they didn’t have a moment to waste on confusing bullshit. Ladybug was already missing a hand and a partner, she couldn’t afford to lose time. She took a gamble and chose to follow Not-Chat to the door she’d chosen. At the entrance to the boiler room, Ladybug could already feel warmth wafting into her face from the open door.

“What are we going to do?”

Ladybug didn’t know. Her train of thought had run off track the moment she laid eyes on the new girl clad in latex, so her plan hadn’t gone any farther than _it’s hot inside the boiler room_. “Just get in there and hide.”

Ladybug shot her good hand up and cast Lucky Charm, successfully this time. From above, a red and black rake fell into her arms.

“What is that supposed to be for?” Still lingering at the door, the girl voiced out loud the same thing Ladybug quietly wondered. 

“That’s for me to worry about, now do as I said.”

“You got this!” She cheered before disappearing into the room behind Ladybug.

 Ladbyug looked down at the gardening tool in her hand. Then around at the mostly barren corridor, spotting nothing that stood out for her to use it with. Statuette appeared around the corner, approaching Ladybug with a calm walk that was sinister in its slowness. 

“You will pay for interrupting my plans. Your friend as well,” the words of her threats snapped like cracks in a glacier. From the way her eyes were narrowed and teeth clenched, Ladybug sensed that her austere anger was fissuring beneath the surface.

Ladybug tried to grasp at the yoyo hanging from her hips, but with only one functioning hand and a huge gardening tool to hang onto, it wasn’t a smooth operation. _What the hell was the rake for?_  Statuette’s pen shot out a marble bullet that Ladybug barely managed to duck. While rising back to her feet, Ladybug used the end of the rake to deliver a swift uppercut straight to Statuette’s stony face. Statuette’s head snapped back at a painful angle from the force of the bash, and she smashed into the opposite wall.

Ladybug whirled into the boiler room with the akuma victim in close pursuit. They were surrounded by pressure vessels, water heaters, and networks of steel exchange pipes between them. A thick heat emanated from within them, filling the entire room. Enveloped by stifling temperatures, Ladybug hoped it would be enough to debilitate her opponent.

Statuette fired at her again. Ladybug swung the rake to deflect it. The tool turned to stone on impact. With an aggravated grunt, Ladybug gave up on it for now and tossed it to the ground. Stick-fighting was Chat Noir's element, not hers. She threw her yoyo out and it wrapped around Statuette’s wrist. Like violent puppetry, Ladybug could pull its string to control the enemy's aim with tugs and pulls every time she attempted to fire magic toward her.

Then, another fissure beneath the ice. A brutality unbecoming of Statuette’s collected attitude took over, and she barreled straight into Ladybug. Statuette slammed her against a pipe column and pinned her there. It took a few moments of struggling for the heat from the boiling water within to begin burning her back. She yelped at the sting, struggling between not losing hold of the strings keeping Statuette’s weapon pointed down with her good hand and fighting to free herself with only the petrified arm to use 

“Ladybug, get away from her!” Catgirl was balancing atop one of the steel containers towering over them. 

 _Brilliant idea, hadn’t thought of it,_ she wanted to snap back. But her miraculous was chiming its first warning into her ear and the heat from the pipe, seeping through her armor, had slowly built up to scalding agony for her.

“The rake!” 

A suggestion came from above, which halted the scuffle between Ladybug and Statuette for them to both look aside to the elegant marble rake on the floor. Stupidly beautiful stone for something so plain.

“Good luck,” Statuette sneered, with a smug glance at the diminishing amount of spots flashing on her earring.

She grappled with Ladybug’s free hand, the one frozen solid, and slammed it against the pipe column. Ladybug flinched by instinct, but she actually couldn’t feel the burning hot pipe through the stone. Lucky for her. Unaffected, she stomped her foot down on the rake.

The handle swung up to ram against the side of Statuettes face. She snarled and released Ladybug’s hand at the same time that “Cataclysm!” was activated above them. Ladybug gave up on holding onto the yoyo and shoved Statuette back with the full strength of both arms. The stranger in Chat’s suit shredded open the piping overhead. Steam exploded out.

Ladybug rolled away, escaping the thick cascade of searing mist by a hair. It poured directly onto Statuette, who Ladybug left tangled in her yoyo cords. Ladybug could only see a faint outline of her, but the guttural scream Statuette released painted a vivid picture of what must have been happening to her icy flesh.

A silver fountain pen dropped to the floor. It rolled to the edge of the downpour of pressurized steam. Ladybug snatched the fancy rake by its handle and used the end to scoop and drag the pen to her from a safe distance. 

Statuette emerged from the dissipating haze of water vapor to chase after her possession. She was mostly melted, a monstrous disaster. There was nothing left of her elegant fury from earlier, only catastrophic rage. Watching her, Ladybug recalled the face of a glacier splitting apart to collapse into the depths of the ocean. What remained of Statuette lumbered forward, struggling to drag the weight of her body on rapidly dissolving legs. One dripping arm reached out for Ladybug and snapped off. It hit the floor with a sickening thud, a sight that filled Ladybug with terror.

“Let’s trade!” Said a familiar voice behind the enemy.

 Through the dispersing cloud of steam, Chat Noir’s boot kicked the yoyo in her direction. _A trade._ She deftly tossed the rake across the room. In the same movement that Not-Chat caught it, she swung it ruthlessly into Statuette. In her weakened state, that was all it took to incapacitate the victim completely. 

Her miraculous was down to one spot. Ladybug hastily snapped the pen in half and purified the dark butterfly within, worried that she wouldn’t repair everything in time before her transformation faded. The moment miraculous ladybugs washed over the room, repairing the pipes, her hand, and revealing Statuette in her un-maimed human form, Ladybug didn’t even give herself the time to sigh in relief. She hurtled out the room and down the corridor they’d come through.

“Ladybug, wait!” Someone cried after her, just as Marinette’s transformation broke.

Marinette heard swift footsteps chasing after her and ran for it. She pushed through the doors of the kitchen and dove behind one of the steel prep stations for cover. The other person burst through only seconds behind her, pausing in the center of the room. Marinette stayed still in her hiding place, careful not to make the slightest sound.

“Who is she,” Not-Chat muttered to herself.

  
A beep just like Chat Noir’s miraculous sounded. Marinette listened to the girl gasp and dart back out the way she came. Marinette had a million questions about what the fuck just happened, but one kept circling back over and over. _Who is she._


	2. Chapter 2

Alya wasn’t sure why she had to run and hide. The knowledge that it needed to be done came like an instinct, like something stronger than her pulling the strings. Like whatever it was about the ring that guided her through doing backflips and throwing a staff with deadly aim. She’d never tried such things before today, yet they came as thoughtlessly as blinking. Light flashed beneath her, and Alya looked down at her feet to see her own sneakers beneath an explosion of white. She stopped in her tracks to gape at the way Chat Noir’s costume evaporated off her body.

“Amazing,” she gasped, light-headed from the rush. “Can’t wait to write about that.”

“You will not,” someone spoke behind her.

With a small shout, Alya spun around.

“You have to keep this secret at all costs,” the disembodied voice ordered.

Its source flitted into her field of vision from below. Alya let out another cry of shock at the sight of a tiny cat-fairy thing. The first time it spoke to her had been during the chaos of the akuma attack, but it was still a startling thing to see.

“My name is Plagg, I’m a kwami, I give the miraculous its power,” it explained in a flat drawl. “You have to hide me now to protect Paris and the world. Capiche?”

She blinked numbly at the… Kwami? It was difficult to focus on the massive amount of information handed to her in so little words. The type of information she’d spent most of her free time speculating about since the day she learned superheroes were real.

“I have so many questions,” she said, breathless.

“Ask them somewhere private.” Plagg burrowed into the front pocket of her blouse, forming a very noticeable lump on Alya’s breast.

She had no problem finding her way out while avoiding the chaos of the banquet hall, where everyone would be coming to their senses and panicking. She played freeze tag with her sisters in these halls for years while they waited for their mother’s shifts to finish, much to the exasperation of the Grand Paris staff.

On her way past the pantry rooms, Alya felt her hair being tugged from its tips. Plagg was desperately pulling it, trying to get her attention. He’d somehow sniffed the scent of Camembert as she passed the pantries and begged her to take some for him. So she went in and came out with two very suspicious lumps in her breast pockets. She took the hotel’s winding service passageways like back alleys, using a longer but unseen route to emerge at the outside of the hotel.

A news van was already parked at the front curb, its camera and sound crew rushing in to get the first scoop. Alya grinned to herself, walking in the opposite direction and thinking of how Ladyblog already had the best scoop of all, right in her pocket.

Three blocks away from her house, she made a detour. The sun was setting on the playground where her sisters loved to stop on the way home. She climbed up the neon green ladder of a jungle gym, into a secluded playhouse shaped like a rocket ship on the outside.

Alya popped open her breast pocket and Plagg fluttered out.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere private.” She sank down to sit cross-legged on the wooden slats of the playhouse floor, right beside the slide.

He squinted at her. “What, are you homeless?”

“Home’s not private. Ever.” Alya reached into her other front pocket to pull out the chunk of Camembert she borrowed from the hotel.

In a blink, Plagg’s judgmental squint became an ear to ear smile. The strange little creature swooped it out of her fingers and shoved the whole piece into his mouth at once. He plopped down across from her, taking a minute to chew the morsel that had been the size of his entire head. His cheeks puffed out adorably as he munched, like the hamsters one of her siblings kept.

“Yeah, you better like that,” Alya muttered, airing out her front pocket and nearly gagging at the lingering smell of Camembert. “Stunk up my shirt for you.”

Plagg grinned up at her with a full mouth and bloated cheeks. She couldn’t resist smiling back. The fading glow of the sunset painted them in warm hues.

“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Alya thought to herself, and it burst out of her mouth the way passionate emotions do when you’re exhilarated. She had no control over the flood of pent up excitement gushing out of her. “I got to _feel_ what a Miraculous is like, so many of my questions are answered—the transformation, the power source—I helped Ladybug, actually _helped_ instead of getting in the way as usual!”

“Why are you crying,” the kwami asked flatly.

“I—Oh my god.” Alya became consciously aware her eyes had started to glass over with barely held in tears. “I dunno, I guess I’m that happy? I get really emotional about Ladybug, okay. This is so embarrassing.”

Plagg laughed at her. “What’s your name?”

She pulled her glasses off to dab her fingers at the corners of her eyes, still feeling giddy as she tilted her head slightly back to look up while blinking rapidly. “Oh! I’m Alya Césaire. From Ladyblog. Did Chat Noir ever tell you about it?”

“Only every single day it updated,” Plagg snorted.

Alya’s head snapped forward to set wide hazel eyes on him. “Really?”

“Yes. _Really_ ,” he parroted back to her, mimicking her voice.

This immensely powerful being was acting _playful_ toward her… in an odd, dry way? She couldn’t hold back a giggle filled with triumph. “I’ll have to ask him for an interview when I return his ring.”

“You’re not doing that.”

Alya pouted. “It’s a small favor considering the huge solid I did him by snatching it from the ice woman. I’ll name him as an _anonymous source_ if I have to be top secret about it.”

“I meant returning the ring. You cannot do that under any circumstance.”

“What.”

Shadows across them grew sharper with every moment the sun sank. Alya put her glasses back on and laughed, a sound strained by her discomfort. She thought she had a handle on the little dude’s humor, but this time she wasn’t getting it.

“Papillon saw his identity today. The Chat Noir miraculous isn’t... safe with him anymore,” Plagg somberly confessed. His little cat mouth looked like it was frowning.

Alya lowered her gaze to her own hands crossed over her lap. Her thumb ran over the silver ring she still wore. “What’s gonna happen to this, then?”

“You have to take it back to the Master who holds the miraculouses.”

 _So there_ are _more than two miraculouses,_ was the first thought to cross her mind. It was a possibility Alya had thought long and hard about. She hungered to know more about the topic, but there were more urgent questions to ask first.

“And what, he’s gonna find someone else to be Chat Noir?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not, after this one failed so early on. He might decide the ring is safer unused and bestow another miraculous to aid Ladybug,” Plagg explained, with something bitter lending an edge to his words.

“And that’s, uh, not good for you? What do you do without a person to use the ring?”

“Absolutely nothing. I don’t even exist in this world without a holder. The ring could be sitting in a box for another six decades before a Chat Noir is chosen again.” He was straight up grumbling now.

Plagg was trapped in a useless state until the ring was worn by someone. How many Chat Noirs have been chosen? How long had Plagg lived? And how many of those years had he spent unable to experience life? He might as well be a genie in a lamp, passed from hero to hero.

Alya couldn’t express how pitiful Plagg’s existence sounded. She tried to anyway. “That sucks, bruh.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. She imagined the dread that must have been looming over Plagg, waiting for her to get up and take him to the Master. Darkness draped over them gradually, until the only thing Alya could see was a pair of glowing green eyes across from her. Being outdoors, alone, in a secluded area, in almost complete darkness, would normally make Alya panic. Tonight was different. She had Plagg with her. She had power over anything that could possibly happen to her.

“Hey,” she whispered in the dark.

“Yeah?”

“Do I really have to take you back to the Master? Like, what if I just… don’t?”

Plagg said nothing. Alya waited. The street lamps around the park flickered to life, lifting the dark just enough for her to make out Plagg’s outline.

“Will he beat me up if I don’t return you?”

Plagg cackled. “No. No, he would not.”

Alya chewed her lip. Nervous fingers drummed over her thigh. “I’d be pretty stoked to keep the ring for a bit. If you wanted to stay at my place for a while. It’s a little crowded with my siblings, but it’s better than the inside of a box, maybe.”

The fluorescent lamps outside shaded them with a yellow-green tinge. Plagg blinked up at her, tilting his head sideways to eye her pensively. “Do you have cheese at home?”

She smirked down at him. “My mom’s the head chef at Grand Paris, she loves the gourmet shit.”

“SOLD.”

Plagg shot upwards and swan dived straight into Alya’s shirt pocket, landing with his hind legs poking out. He kicked around in there for a bit, adjusting himself. With a quiet laugh, Alya got to her feet and climbed out of the playhouse to head home.

Plagg poked his head out of her pocket. “So what’s your name?”

“ _Alya_ ,” she repeated to him.

“Not that one. What’s your hero name going to be?”

Her _what_ name? Alya froze in her tracks, suddenly breathless.  She looked down at Plagg, who smirked up at her from her breast pocket.

“Don’t play with me like that,” she warned.

“I’m not,” the kwami insisted. “You knocked it out of the park on your first go as Chat Noir, didn’t you?”


	3. Chapter 3

Blue eyes stared at the ceiling, brows furrowed in deep thought. She couldn’t take her mind off the yellow-eyed Chat Noir. The mysterious girl who saved her. She had his armor, his weapons, and his powers.

“Did I fall for a trick?” she asked out loud.

Tikki pushed herself up to a sitting position on Marinette’s belly, her expression equally concerned. “But you heard her miraculous start counting down. An akuma wouldn’t let her de-transform.”

Papillon could make a near-perfect replica of Chat Noir, but he couldn’t give Copycat the option to become himself again. “So she has a real miraculous? She’s one of us?”

“The powers were real, but she’s not one of us. There is only one Chat Noir and she's taken his ring.”

“But Statuette—She should have been the one who had the ring. Where’d the girl come from? Was she Papillon’s right hand, who Statuette handed the miraculous to after stealing it? _She’s going to give the ring to him!_ ” Marinette bolted upright in bed mid-sentence, which flipped Tikki around and sent her tumbling away.

“Marinette!” She bounced back up with a huff after landing on the duvet.

Marinette was too involved in her personal conspiracies to pay attention to her. “It was a setup to confuse me and I let her get away with the miraculous. Papillon must _already have it_.”

She looked to Tikki, her eyes wide with distress and and hands clutching her pigtails tight.

“Don’t panic yet. I don’t think that’s the case. She did save you today.”

Part of the trick to make Ladybug trust her, Marinette assumed. Although now that Tikki pointed it out, there were some serious flaws in this villainous plot. The stranger stopped Statuette when she was moments away from taking Ladybug’s earrings. The stranger helped her stop Statuette, when they could have overpowered Ladybug by working together.

“You think she’s keeping the miraculous away from Papillon?”

“For now,” Tikki sighed. “It looks like she wants it for herself.”

Marinette wanted to be relieved that at least Papillon didn’t have it. Was having a second opponent to worry about any better? She let herself fall backwards and sink into the pillows. She worried so much for Chat Noir and had no idea how she could ever find out if he was okay. Tikki rose to hover above Marinette’s face.

“You have to find her and take the miraculous,” she said quietly.

“Calm down, Papillon,” Marinette retorted, although she was well aware of how different this situation was on every level. There were so many things to be anxious about all at once. It was spreading Marinette thin and making her grumpy. She rubbed at her eyes and apologized. “Sorry. I’m just really uncomfortable with that.”

Tikki skittishly swayed in the air inches over her. “We don’t know what kind of person she is.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

There came an urge to wait until speaking to her partner before deciding what to do. _You don’t have a partner anymore, that’s exactly the problem._ It was all on her.

“How are we going to return the ring after we have it? There’s no way to find Chat Noir now.”

Tikki took a long moment to consider this, and ended up frowning. “Master Fu knows who he is. We’ll bring it to him and he will take it from there.”

It wasn't enough to soothe the apprehension looming over Marinette about this entire ordeal, the dread that Ladybug was on her own from now on.

 

After a fitful night of falling in and out of sleep, Marinette tried to go through her morning routine as if nothing had changed. Still bleary even after showering, she dragged herself to sit at her desk with a mug of coffee. She started to click through her email, only half-focused. Most of her attention was elsewhere. On that girl, specifically. As if summoned by fate, the next email she opened contained a blurry photo of someone with wild brown hair leaping through the air.

The sight of her struck Marinette like a livewire. Suddenly alert, her eyes darted to the sender: The Ladyblog Update Feed. Alya signed Marinette up for it ages ago and it had proven useful more than a few times. Alya was more on top of happenings in Paris than Marinette, so this wouldn’t be the first time Ladybug found out that something’s going on through the blog.

The email linked to a video posted 15 minutes ago, titled _Who is Alley Cat?_. In it, the camera pointed straight toward a solid gold Eiffel Tower in the distance. “Someone’s turned the Eiffel Tower solid gold,” Alya’s voice reported offscreen. “Stay tuned for further investigation while I wait for the arrival of—Oh! Who’s that?”

Seconds later, a black shape descended from above and landed directly across from Alya. Long dark hair poured over her shoulders in half-formed curls, the ends painted blonde. She looked straight into Alya’s camera and flashed a secretive smile that lit up her yellow eyes behind the mask. Then she leapt over the edge of the balcony, the golden tips of her hair rippling over her as she descended out of frame. The video cut to black.

“Who the hell is Alley Cat?” Marinette asked herself for the hundredth time.

But this time was the most satisfying, now that Alya had given a name to her frustration. She’d also confirmed that “Alley Cat” was currently in action somewhere. When Ladybug took to the streets of Paris, she flipped open her GPS and followed it to Chat Noir’s signal. It lead her to the outer gates of the Agreste mansion.

Ladybug had to shield her eyes from the harsh glare of sunlight bouncing off the high walls surrounding the property. Like the Eiffel Tower behind it, they'd been fully gilded. Someone who looked equally familiar and unfamiliar pressed against the archway leading to Adrien’s driveway. Ladybug could see the back of her head, peering over the edge to eavesdrop on a conversation happening on the other side. Past the tips of her curls, Ladybug’s eyes swept down the curve of her back (it was very curved indeed) to land on a silver baton resting at the base of her spine.

She landed directly behind the girl and snatched the weapon. By the time “Alley Cat” felt something amiss, Ladybug had already pushed the button to extend the staff. When the girl turned to look around, Ladybug slammed the staff against her chest to pin her against the gleaming wall.

“Where’s the real Chat Noir?” Ladybug fumed, her voice low within their close proximity.

“I—I don’t don’t know— _Ow!_ ” Ladybug jerked the staff forward, crushing it against her sternum.

“You’re not going to tell me who you are, so I’ll make—”

“I’m Alya from Ladyblog!”

The staff fell to the ground with a series of clangs. The voices beyond the front gate went silent. She didn’t think the miraculous thief would admit her identity at all, let alone this easily. She never thought it would be _Alya_. It couldn’t be. Ladybug’s hand brushed over her face, whisking away the dark brown hair falling over the side of her forehead.  

“Cœur d'Or heard you,” possibly-Alya whispered. The black mask covered the spot where her beauty mark would be.

Like the night before, Ladybug’s worries were pulled in all directions at once. There was no time for any of them to sink in. The akuma was the urgent priority. “Aly—Chat—Ugh, I mean—”

“Alley Cat,” she supplied with a smile.

“Just don’t move from here.”

Fighting off a heartache and an urge to scream, Ladybug turned her back on Alley Cat and strode through the front gates of the Agreste mansion. Alone. Chloé and Adrien were there, standing on either side of Chloé’s yellow Mercedes Benz. Alongside Chloé was the akuma victim, a guy their age clad in shimmering gold spandex.

“There she is!” Chloé said. “I told you Ladybug comes whenever I call.”

She couldn’t have called, but Ladybug lacked the energy to deal with her. “What’s going on here?” she asked Adrien.

She hadn’t seen him in a while, so it was good to know he was still gorgeous. He opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated. He couldn’t seem to form any words in time before Chloé cut in to answer for him.

“I turned this broke deadbeat down for a date and look what happens.”

“But the Eiffel Tower,” whined Cœur d'Or. “I did that for you. I don’t need a job when everything I touch turns to gold.”

“I have to say the redecorations around here look pretty tacky,” Ladybug taunted, attempting to pull his attention away from the civilians.

She should have guessed that Chloé wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen. “So nouveau riche, right? As if we’d ever date new money.”

She chummily nudged Ladybug with her shoulder and looked to Adrien for backup, but his face was a picture of absolute disagreement.

“Not even the richest man in the world? Look at this flower, Chloé.” Cœur d'Or raised a golden rose to her face. “Each petal alone is a small fortune.”

“That’s not how getting rich works, you imbecile.” Chloé threw her head back and opened her mouth wide to release an exasperated groan. “If you turn everything you touch into goddamn 18 karat gold, you’re going to make it _worthless_. Basic economics _._ This is why everyone hates poor people, they’re fucking idiots!”

“Chloé!” Adrien and Ladybug scolded together.

With a snarl, Cœur d'Or reached for Chloé’s throat. Ladybug’s yo-yo snapped around his arm and wrenched it away. He attempted to tear the cords away with his fingers, but that only made the situation worse for both him and Ladybug. The yo-yo strings wrapped around his arm solidified. Ladybug dropped her weapon to the ground as the gold coating spread from Cœur d'Or’s end to hers. He waved his arm to watch the solid gold yo-yo flap uselessly with it. The outline of a pink mask unfurled over his face.

Ladybug didn’t need to hear Hawkmoth to guess what his orders were.

“Both of you get out of here now,” she commanded Chloé and Adrien.

“What about you? You’re disarmed,” Adrien said.

“Chat Noir’s arriving soon, I bet. Let them deal with this mess, Adribean.” Chloé blew a kiss to Ladybug before climbing into the front seat of her Benz.

Adrien was right and Chloé was atrocious and wrong. Ladybug was disarmed, but Chat Noir wasn’t coming. Cœur d'Or charged forward and swung at Ladybug, but the only thing she could do was dodge and dip out of the way repeatedly. Even though he was severely hindered by her yo-yo molded to him, hand-to-hand was not an option against an opponent whose touch would immobilize her.

The back of Ladybug’s legs bumped against the headlights of Chloé’s car. Cœur d'Or cornered her and lunged, his hand stretched straight at her. Then two things happened at the same time: Adrien jumped in between them, arms spread out to shield Ladybug, and a silver bar swooped over Cœur d'Or’s head to hook beneath his chin. With a strangled choke, the akuma victim was dragged back by the neck.

Instead of following common sense and basic survival instincts, Adrien stepped toward Cœur d'Or as the opponent was tugged backwards. “How—Who is that?”

Ladybug took him by the arm and pulled him out of the fray. She knew she was gripping too tight and she hoped he couldn’t feel the tremble in her fingers. Her fear in that moment caused her emotions toward him to completely bypass concern and go straight into fury. “Get—in—the car!”

The sound of Cœur d'Or elbowing Alley Cat in the gut was a deep thump that made everyone who heard it wince. She lost her grip and he wrestled free of the chokehold.

“Chloé is not going to leave!” He punched the hood of the car.

Gold spread outwards from the impact of his fist. Chloé had her face pressed against the windshield, gawking at the fight outside. At the sight of gold rapidly spreading over her car, she pivoted in her seat to jump out of the vehicle. But she couldn’t force the door open. It had already been trapped shut by the gilding. In seconds the entire vehicle was covered. Nothing inside was visible, but soft pounding could be heard from underneath if you strained your ear.

While Ladybug cast Lucky Charm, Adrien pressed his palms against where Chloé was thrashing.

“Stop exerting yourself,” he mumbled, frustrated by his own futility.

Ladybug’s magic gifted her with a long, flowing ribbon attached to a wand. She fluttered it about for a few moments while Alley Cat fended the akuma away from her, watching how gracefully it twirled in the air like something a rhythmic gymnast would use. It was beautiful, but what was it for?

“She’s suffocating in here!” Adrien called out to Ladybug, keeping fearful attention to the weakening sounds of Chloé’s fists from inside the car.

Ladybug cast him aside to hone her attention on Cœur d'Or. “I’m trying to figure this out, just stay out of the way for your own sake.”

Alley Cat’s weapon had already been turned to gold, but it was still perfectly usable (unlike a certain yo-yo). Adrien had seen the Ladyblog update, but hadn’t wanted to believe it. He awakened from Statuette’s curse yesterday with blacked out memories and no ring on his finger. He assumed the akuma had taken it, that Papillon had it by now. It was an idea that crippled him with fear, but even that would have been easier to swallow than the truth. He’d always known Papillon taking his miraculous to use it against Ladybug was a possibility. He never once considered someone else taking his powers to use them _with_ Ladybug. Ladybug jumped right into tandem with Alley Cat, fighting alongside her without questioning it.

Everything Adrien had was being pulled from beneath his feet.

Cœur d'Or grabbed Alley Cat’s baton—Chat Noir’s baton—while she held it with both hands and used it to fling her out of the way. She landed roughly on her back and the baton rolled out of her grasp. Rookie mistake. After blinking white spots out of her eyes, she sprang to her feet and reached for the weapon. But it was no longer on the ground.

Adrien held the golden staff, his narrowed stare fixed on the yellow-eyed girl. “Use Cataclysm on the car right now.”


	4. Chapter 4

_Two things happened at the same time: Alley Cat leapt onto the roof of the vehicle and used Cataclysm to shred it open while Ladybug twirled her ribbon in elegant curls around Cœur d'Or. His attempt to swat it away caused the ribbon to turn solid gold, trapping him inside its coils. Chloé Bourgeois was pulled out of the open roof by Alley Cat while Ladybug effortlessly took care of the akuma now that its victim was restrai_

Alya’s phone buzzed on her nightstand. A notification from an unknown number (77-77-77-77-77) read: _Come outside. It’s Ladybug._

 _Lol k,_ Alya replied to Marinette and/or Nino's lazy attempt to prank her. She rolled her eyes and finished up writing her article. Ten minutes later, her phone lit up again. She prepared to block the troll’s number. The message this time was a photo—A selfie of Ladybug looking disgruntled.

Alya nearly flipped her computer off her lap in the startled full-body spasm that overcame her. She scrambled to her feet, opened the bedroom window, and leaned over her balcony railing to look at the street beneath. No one was there. Something bounced gently off Alya’s shoulder. It was Ladybug’s yoyo, dangling. Alya’s eyes followed its string up to find Ladybug on the edge of her roof. She beckoned Alya up.

“Gimme a sec!” Alya ducked back indoors.

She was barefoot in her pajamas. Ladybug couldn’t see her like this. Grasping around in the dark, she threw a hoodie on and shoved her feet into the nearest pair of sneakers. Unfortunately, they were three sizes too small.

“What are you doing? Those are mine,” her sister grumbled from the bed at the other side of the room.

“None of your business,” Alya muttered.

She found her own shoes and wriggled into them while rummaging through their desk. From its drawer she pulled out a pack of mints.

“Where are you going?”

“To see Ladybug,” Alya whispered back, popping two candies into her mouth.

With a disinterested _ugh_ , her groggy sister rolled over and pulled the sheets over her head. Alya looked at herself in the mirror, illuminated by moonlight from her open window. She wanted to fix her hair. She wanted to put lipstick on. She wanted a better outfit. But she couldn’t keep Ladybug waiting. More than that, she couldn’t wait a moment longer to see Ladybug.

She came back out and took hold of the yoyo string, twining her forearm around it for grip. Ladybug pulled her up and out effortlessly. Alya felt a rush of excitement as she scaled the wall of her own home, all the way up to the roof. Ladybug took her hand the moment Alya was within reach and drew her in.

“I won’t let you fall,” she promised.

That possibility hadn’t even crossed Alya’s mind. Ladybug could have been standing at the edge of an erupting volcano and Alya would feel safe climbing up to her. Ladybug guided her up the slanted tiles of the roof with a hand on her back, until they reached the flat center beam.

“How do you know where I live?”

“Magic.” Ladybug brandished the yoyo with her free hand. The other one still rested on Alya’s back. Her heart skipped a beat at the realization that Ladybug hadn’t pulled away.

Ladybug’s gaze dropped to the silver band around Alya’s finger. The ring wasn’t Alya’s style, so she wore it with the bezel pointing in. Inside out wasn’t the most comfortable way to wear it, but called less attention.

“Did you see what happened to Chat Noir?” Ladybug asked, her voice so quiet that Alya almost didn't hear it over the nighttime wind.

She swallowed, feeling her throat suddenly dried out. “Not really.”

“I need you to tell me what he looks like. I have to know if he’s okay.” How much Ladybug worried, how much she cared, was written all over her face with such intensity that Alya thought she could die of envy.

“I... I don’t know. I was hiding out of sight when he lost the ring. I could hear him, but I didn’t see a thing.”

Ladybug dropped Alya’s hand and sank down to sit on the tiles of the roof. She slumped forward to rest her forehead on her knees, letting out a deep sigh. Guilt tugged at Alya’s conscience. She had been so ecstatic by the chain of events leading up to tonight that she hadn’t considered the position Ladybug was in. While Alya was having the best days of her life, Ladybug had lost a friend.

“I could… help you investigate who he is? Don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’ve got a ton of experience doing that. And you know him, so… we could fill in gaps for each other.” Alya was glad Ladybug’s head stayed down, unable to see the way Alya’s hands fidgeted as she tried to play it cool while proposing the idea of her dreams.

Ladybug squeezed her eyes shut tight. She failed to mask a tremble in her voice when she said, “I don't know anything about him.”

Alya wasn't prepared to see the strongest person she had ever known so vulnerable in front of her. She didn’t know how to process it. The only thing she could think to do was carefully lower herself to sit beside Ladybug. If it were one of her friends in this situation, Alya could brush her knuckles down her arm. Alya could scoot against her side and lean her head on her shoulder. Alya could drape an arm over her and stroke her hair, the way that always calmed Marinette during her anxiety attacks. Alya _thought_ about doing each of these things, but somehow they all seemed wildly inappropriate to do to _Ladybug_.

So, Alya just sat there at a respectful distance. In silence. Staring at her shoes. Occasionally looking past them at the street below. Trying to stare at anything but Ladybug. It took a lot of self-control not to stare at Ladybug.

Eventually, the hero raised her head to ask Alya, “How come you told me?”

She didn’t even have an answer to that. “It never crossed my mind that I should hide it from you.”

“His kwami doesn’t make you keep your identity secret?” Ladybug’s brows knitted behind the mask and her lips pursed. It was the most attractive face of confusion Alya had ever seen.

“He told me to, but I, just, assumed you were an exception. You really didn’t tell each other?”

“Never. Every time I considered it, my kwami talked me out of it.”

“What’s the worst that could happen if you did? Plagg just thought it was funny that I told you right away.” She could feel that she was asking dumb noob questions, but then Ladybug smiled and Alya forgot to breathe.

“Yeah, it kind of is,” she said. Ladybug placed her hand over Alya’s, where it rested on the tiles. “I’m really glad it was you of all people.”

 

Later on, Marinette would feel sorry that Alya had to see Ladybug like that. She had no shame breaking down in front of Alya. What happened that night was far too tame to even be considered a breakdown by Marinette’s disastrous standards. Still, she knew she’d made a mistake when her best friend didn't reach out to comfort her.

Ladybug couldn't expect the things Marinette would from her. The idea of treating her closest friend like a stranger tasted bitter in her mouth, but it had to be done.

The moment she destransformed on her balcony, Tikki flitted up to Marinette’s face to give the closest thing to a stern look that she could manage (It was mostly adorable). “Why didn’t you ask for the ring?”

Marinette opened her mouth, but the answer died on the tip of her tongue. She mumbled something purposefully incoherent and fumbled with the latch of her door. Tikki grabbed the tip of Marinette’s nose with both of her tiny hands and heaved the girl’s face up to look her in the eyes, although Marinette needed to go cross-eyed to do so.

“I chickened out, okay!” Marinette scrunched her nose to shake off her kwami.

“But it’s just Alya.” Tikki floated a few inches back, where Marinette’s vision could focus properly on her bewildered expression.

“Yeah, I know. That’s why—I think—There’s no rush.”

“No rush?”

“It’s in safe hands with her. Plus, I know where she lives, where she goes to school, I have her phone number. I know all the places to find her when the time comes to get the ring.”

“But she’s _using_ it,” Tikki protested. “Alya’s not suited to hold the miraculous.”

Marinette’s mouth slanted into a barely-restrained scowl. “You and I have always disagreed on that.”

Tikki huffed. “But I was right. Look at you now, Marinette. You can’t tell me you weren’t meant to be Ladybug.”

She fell silent and Tikki beamed a triumphant _Ha! Got you there!_ grin.

“Yeah, you were completely right about that,” Marinette admitted.

“Ha! Got you th—!”

“ _But_ ,” she cut Tikki off mid-gloat. “Just because you were right about me doesn’t mean I was wrong about Alya.”

She flipped her balcony door open to drop into her room so she wouldn’t have to look at the way Tikki frowned when she said, “It shouldn’t be up to you to decide that. It never has.”

Marinette rolled to the edge of bed and toed her shoes off, confident that she was winning this battle. “But the kwami—Plagg, she called him? Alya would never use him against his will. He has to think she’s good for it too.”

“Urgh, _Plagg!_ It’s not his decision either! He should know better!” Tikki’s tiny voice cried out behind her.

“He knows better than anyone, he’s half of Chat Noir. It _should_ be his choice.”

Tikki paused. Marinette knew she'd hit the bullseye when the kwami let her change into pajamas with no further argument. She stayed silent until Marinette wriggled under her covers and lay her head on the pillow. She rolled over to look at Tikki sitting on a pillow with a resigned look on her face.

“What?” Marinette asked with a sigh.

“Don’t you have a bad feeling about this Marinette?” she said softly.

“Tikki, I need someone to have my back too. I have a worse feeling about what happens while I have to save Paris on my own. I tried to keep her out of it today, but what would’ve happened if she wasn’t there to step in?”

“Don’t you worry Alya might get hurt?”

“ _Pffff._ ” Marinette would have laughed if she wasn’t so sleepy. “I’ve always had to worry about that. Since day one, she’s been throwing herself into danger just to be close to Ladybug. At least with the ring she can protect herself.”


	5. Chapter 5

The Ladyblog used to be an almost constant livestream of pictures, video clips, brief text updates about akuma activity, and the occasional long community discussions about Ladybug sightings or speculation on her identity. It changed to something less chaotic in the past week. Recent posts came once a day and were mostly written in the style of multimedia news articles, carefully pieced together hours after the catastrophes had taken place. It seemed Alya was trying to take on a more professional angle. Good for her. Terrible for Adrien.

At the end of the latest entry, the top comment read:

“ **Queen B**  
Yes, I fought crime with Ladybug yet again. As usual, I’ll be taking questions here from everyone who wants details from a more legitimate eye witness. I have to say, I love that Ladybug finally cut the guy loose and got an upgrade. I would do the same! But she really should have contacted me if she was looking for a girl to fill those shoes. ((I’m still available if you’re reading this, Ladybug. You have my number ♡))”

Beneath it, a chain of 400+ replies that erupted into a petty flame war between Alley Cat and Chat Noir stans. Adrien rolled his eyes and closed the site. He would return later to give all the comments in Chat Noir’s favor a thumbs up.

At the sound of a familiar voice, he shoved the phone into his pocket. He almost missed the person he’d skipped class to wait for.

“Hey!” he called after her. “Can I talk to you?”

Marinette spun, already wearing that wide-eyed look she always gave when he caught her off guard. She was with Alya, as usual. Her friend’s arm, slung over Marinette’s shoulder, slid away as both girls faced him.

“Talk—Whe—Now? How even are you here, did you run?” Marinette sputtered.

“Actually, I—No? What?”

“On Mondays all your classes are on the complete other side—”

Adrien was afraid to know where Marinette was going with that sentence, so it was lucky for everyone involved that Alya’s voice abruptly boomed over the second half of it, “ _Actually_ , _I_ was about to have an important talk with Mari—”

“You said it’s nothing big. We can catch up later, right?” Marinette laughed too loud for no reason at all and Alya bit the inside of her cheek.

“Great, I’ll just borrow her for one second.” Adrien put his hand on Alya’s shoulder to steer her toward the front steps of their school.

“You wanted to talk to _me_?”

“I’ll only be a minute. Please?”

The girls exchanged a look that definitely meant something, but Adrien couldn’t guess what. Alya shrugged and walked with him far enough away to be out of earshot, although they could both still see Marinette staring at them with her palms pressed against the glass doors of the school. On the other side of his periphery, Adrien’s car came around the corner.

He cut straight to the point. “Do you know who Alley Cat is?”

Alya narrowed her eyes. “Why? Do you?”

“I wish! Even if you only have suspects, can you let me know?”

“Why?”

“Because I have to—” Gorille honked. Adrien held a hand up, gesturing to wait. “It’s just really important to me.

“Uh, you’ve seen her more up close than I have.”

He was probably giving himself away. Did it matter anymore if he did? “Can we at least—Can I help you?”

“Help me what.” Her expression shifted from narrow-eyed suspicion to narrow-eyed confusion. Her eyes didn't change, only the slant of her mouth and the tilt of her head.

“With Alley Cat.”

His car honked again. Adrien clenched his eyes shut and sighed through gritted teeth. “I have to go to a photoshoot.”

“Um, what was that supposed to mean, though?”

Adrien smiled before unfurling his grand plan. “Let me help you investigate who she is.”

Alya cringed. She actually cringed at just the thought. “Oh, god. No.”

“What do you mean, oh god? I can help!”

Another honk, more disruptive this time. For a few long seconds they stared at each other while Gorille kept his hand down on the horn.

“I really don’t think you should,” Alya said during the awkward silence after.

“Why? I’m going to do it anyway, so we might as well be collaborating if we’re looking for the exact same person.”

As she shook her head, her gaze shifted to something over his shoulder. She paused, then began to back away. “Look, I’m gonna go, Adrien. I don’t wanna get you in trouble with her.”

A car door snapped shut and Adrien looked back to see Nathalie marching straight at him.

“Stay and chat with your friends, we have all the time in the world.” She didn’t sound annoyed, but he knew she was.

His schedule this week was a hellscape of nonstop commitments that came dangerously close to overlapping. Adrien would normally consider himself absolutely immune to the effects of passive aggression, but today it scratched like sandpaper against his nerves. Rather than make an apology or a polite excuse, he balled his hands into fists and breezed past her.

In the car, he pushed his fingertips into his eyelids, fighting off the frustration prickling at their corners. Nathalie began listing off his tasks for the day before they’d even started moving. Today, he had a shoot for a magazine, then promotional shots for his father’s line at a different studio. He would be home no earlier than eleven if all went well. Tomorrow, he had fencing after school, another magazine spread to do, and then a late-night runway show for Lacoste.

It had been like this, day after day, ever since he lost his ring. Yesterday, he had a film shoot for a commercial that lasted nearly 18 hours. It used to be bearable, even fun, with Plagg in his pocket to joke about the horrors of the fashion world. Without someone to laugh with, they were only horrific. Grueling days on his schedule had never come consecutively for an entire week like this. It would have been a rough time without him losing the most important part of his life on top of it. Adrien’s bones ached from the tiredness and the loneliness.

“Try not to delay us when we pick you up tomorrow,” Nathalie added at the end of her summary for the following day.

“It was two minutes.”

“The photoshoot is scheduled too closely to the end of your classes. Even leaving on time and weaving through traffic, the soonest we could possibly arrive would be ten minutes late.”

“You should have thought about that when you scheduled it,” he grumbled beneath his breath.

“Your father made the schedule.”

Of course he did. Nathalie was cold, but she at least had a human understanding of Adrien’s feelings and why they should be taken into account. It was rare for her to actually take them into account and do something about it, but she would at least, in her own chilly way, express some vague regret that she didn't every now and then. He wanted to blame Nathalie. At least pretend it wasn't completely his fault. Did she know what she’d done?

Adrien asked softly, “What do you remember from when you were akumatized?”

Silence, except for her fingertips tapping away at her tablet.

“You turned me to stone.”

That got her to look up right away.

“I’m sorry?” she said in a way that purposely sounded as though she wasn't sorry at all. He knew she would never say the words if she didn't mean them. Maybe to someone she should kiss up to she would, but she had nothing to gain from sucking up to Adrien. She quickly covered it up with, “You’re clearly alright.”

“Are you?”

“Why.”

“You’ve been pulling all nighters.”

“Said who.”

“I see the little suitcase in the corner of your office that you bring during Fashion Week.”

Nathalie snorted, a quiet huff of air through her nose. “Observant. Well, I don't know what your father is planning, but it’s going to be a grueling month for both of us.”

For both of them. Adrien smiled at her and she went back to working on her tablet without acknowledging it. After a minute, she added, “I don't remember a single thing from the day the gala was supposed to be. A butterfly landed on me and I blacked out.”

 

* * *

 

At the studio, they placed him in front of a green screen, handed him a beach ball, and told him to jump.

“Why do you look so worried? You're at the beach!” the photographer scolded.

Adrien tried not to think about how there was nothing he could do anymore to help Ladybug, or anyone in Paris. He couldn't even help Alya with a blog.

“Not working, not happy enough. He needs to jump higher. Assistant, bring the trampoline.”

 

* * *

 

The second shoot of the day required less exertion. It still required him to stand for hours, though. Adrien hoped his dad would make an appearance to approve the art direction for his own line. He didn't. Nathalie was sending pictures from her phone and he was relaying feedback via text.

“Ridiculous,” the set designer hissed.

He seemed frustrated that Adrien and Nathalie were not as irritated by Mr. Agreste deeming himself too good to show up. He was clearly new to the company. Adrien hadn’t seen his own dad around his own house in days. Although, his Royce was missing from the garage during the day and parked there at night, so Adrien knew he wasn’t away.

 

* * *

 

A thunderous rumbling woke him on the ride home. Adrien’s eyes snapped open in time to see the side of a building cave in. Before he could react, Gorille stepped on the pedal and sped away.

“Wait!” He scrambled for the door handle. It was locked.

“What do you think you can do about a collapsing building?” Nathalie muttered, typing away on her phone. “Buckle your seatbelt.”

Adrien’s stomach sank, watching the cloud of fallout shrink in the rear window as he was taken in the opposite direction.

When they got home, he made a theatrical display of his exhaustion (which hardly required any faking) and rushed to bed. He formed his bedsheets into a somewhat Adrien-sized lump and climbed out his window. He looked at the ground two stories below and hesitated. It was far more challenging to sneak out when he wasn't guaranteed to land on his feet.

It took him fifteen minutes alone to make his way down the side of his house. He ended up falling gracelessly, although he did still land on his feet. It hurt like hell. Then he had to find a way to scale the front gate. When he landed roughly on the sidewalk, Adrien was sure his ankle was sprained.

Adrien didn’t know shit about public transportation this late at night, so he limped to the street where he’d seen the falling building. It took him an hour. Only to find it in untouched condition. The street was empty and silent, sound asleep. Adrien groaned and sat himself down on the curb. He’d completely missed the action. His probably-sprained ankle screamed _you should’ve stayed home, idiot_ ! What could he do now? He hadn’t planned this far ahead. Honestly, he hadn’t planned what to do beyond going out his window. As made clear by the state of his ankle. Did he have to limp back home on it? He couldn’t possibly climb over his front gate like this, let alone up to his room. How did _anyone_ get by without superpowers?

He moped on the curb until a bum on the other side of the street stared at him intensely for longer than necessary, which freaked Adrien out enough to get him on his feet. He endured three blocks of walking before sitting back down on the sidewalk. He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to die, right here, on the sidewalk in front of a Brioche Dorée. So it wouldn’t even matter if he decided to do something suicidal right now, like calling Nathalie.

She answered halfway through the first ring. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Hi, Nathalie. Are you still working?”

“Go to sleep.”

“Right here on the street?”

“What. No. In your bed. Obviously. Why would—Adrien. Tell me you are in the house right now.”

“Um. I would like to be, which is what I’m calling about.”

She hung up on him. Adrien frowned at his phone. There was no one else he could call.

A minute later, it rang. It was Nathalie.

“Drop a pin so I know where to hit you with my car.”

She hung up before he could say anything. He sent his location to her and waited, stomach twisting into knots. When her Lexus pulled to a stop in front of him, she didn’t get out or even roll down the window or give Adrien any invitation to enter. It felt rude for Adrien to just let himself in, but that’s the only option he had.

“What on earth were you doing here.” She didn’t sound pissed off, but he knew she was.

“I... went for a jog.”

“In jeans.”

“I didn’t think I’d have time to shower before I got home for class.”

“That’s disgusting.”  
  
“Yeah.”

“Buckle your seatbelt.”

He did. “Also, I think I need a doctor’s appointment.”

“With a psychiatrist.”

“No, like my ankle is definitely broken or something. From climbing out the window and over the gate.”  
  
“You snuck out, broke your ankle, and you ‘jogged’ on it in the middle of the night. I’m not telling your father about this, you are.”

“At least if I can't walk it'll get us out of all those photoshoots and runways, right?”

  
Maybe he was half-asleep, but for a moment, he thought he saw the corner of her lip twist into a smile.


	6. Chapter 6

At the back corner of a coffee shop three blocks away from Françoise Dupont, a head of brown and red hair slumped face-down on an open laptop.

Something small and dark poked out of the shoulder bag resting beside her and rose to peek at her screen. “What is it?”

Alya jerked upright to swipe the kwami back into his hiding spot. “Hey, get down!”

Frantic hazel eyes darted around the coffee shop, but no one seemed to be looking toward her corner. From time to time, a group of people would approach her table with coffee and snacks in hand, thinking it was empty, then roll their eyes at the sight of one girl hogging the entire booth to herself. It was rude of Alya, but this was the only spot she felt comfortable bringing Plagg to talk while she did work. The angle and the height of the booth kept them almost completely out of sight, and the constant whirring of blenders and coffee grinders concealed the sound of an extra voice in there with her.

“Grumpy at your own writing?”

“The opposite,” she said, digging through the pockets of the computer bag he spent his days in. “The past few attacks were some of the best reports I’ve ever written.”

Her hands brushed against him in their search for her earbuds. Plagg purred loud, much too loud to be genuine. He was fishing for attention. Unfortunately, Alya’s crowded home conditions kept him starved for attention these days. With a short laugh, she gave him a long scratch under the chin.

“Let me guess— _rrrr!_ —No one likes them?” Plagg said between purrs.

“Why would you say that?” Alya’s hand snapped away. “I mean, that's exactly the problem, but why would you say that?”

“Because no one reads anymore. People like videos!”

She stuffed her earbuds into place, frowning. “But my eyewitness accounts are basically perfect now. What about my attention to detail? My visceral storytelling that places you in the moment, as if you were there! No, what I get is constant messages asking why I don't do videos with live commentary anymore. Other than that first Alley Cat video I staged, my views have been on the floor.”

Traffic spiked enormously when Alley Cat first appeared and Ladyblog was the only source with a glimpse of her, then promptly plummeted in the weeks after.

“Maybe I should just Peter Parker it. Set up cameras to film the action.”

“Do you ever have time for setup when suddenly people are being cursed left and right?” Plagg pointed out. “It’s not as if akumas ever stay in one place, either.”

He was right. She couldn't juggle discretely filming akumas while being involved in taking care of those attacks. Bystanders would surely figure out who Alley Cat is if she were spotted grabbing a camera at some point. This secret identity thing was such bullshit.

“Nah. You're still missing what the people really want,” Plagg continued. “Look at your comments. Do you think kids with names like _ladybug-in-the-tardis-with-sherlock_ care if Ladyblog reads like a legit news site? Do they really?”

God damn it, he was right again. “So what am I supposed to do then?”

The kwami shrugged his tiny shoulders. “All I know is your commentary was fun, and that's what they came to your blog for instead of just looking up Ladybug clips uploaded by anyone on YouTube.”

An employee brushed past Alya to rummage through an adjacent supply closet. She fixed her eyes on her computer screen, hoping the purple buds in her ears made it seem like she was on a call. “I forget you used to follow me.”

Plagg must have ducked down, because his voice came back muffled. “ _I_ didn't.”

“So you think footage is boring without a person liveblogging it.” It felt weird talking to someone without looking at them, and she couldn’t help waving her hands in her seat as she spoke. “Well, I got my hands full now and it's not like there's another person out there who is obsessed with Ladybug enough to recklessly throw themselves into the midst of akumas!”

“Isn’t there? Someone offered to help just yesterday.”

“I’m not gonna do that. I just gotta keep grabbing other people’s stuff to embed in my posts.”

“There's some interesting talk on your boards… About the photos users are submitting,” Plagg said.

“What, that they suck?”

For photos and videos, Alya now relied on what readers shared in the “Sightings” subforum. All of them were awful quality, every time. Photos were blurry and  too distant to see anything clear, videos were nauseatingly shaky and also too far from the action to see much. The only ones decent enough to publish with her articles were snapshots from the aftermath.

“No, something that's right up your alley.”

With a snort, she glanced to her bag. He was curled at the bottom with her phone in his hands. It was practically both of theirs these days. At first Plagg was surprised that Alya never bothered to change the lock code when he figured it out. She was never much of a secret-keeper, and figured it was pointless to try hiding anything from a 24/7 companion like him anyway. Since Plagg was confined to her bag whenever they came home at night, Alya left her phone in there for him to have some entertainment until morning came.

He offered the cellphone up. It was already open to the page he’d been talking about, a thread titled _ALLEYBUG IS THE NEW LADYNOIR!_

 _“_ If I didn't know any better, I'd think you made a secret account just to post that.”

She never cared for discussion about Ladybug’s love life on the blog, but this… This could be a special exception. It had more than a thousand replies, which meant that some drama definitely exploded in there.

While Alya read through it, Plagg couldn’t resist teasing. “Some people noticed that Ladybug seems to _really like_ Alley Cat.”

It wasn’t all in Alya’s head. That was the very topic of Alya’s latest article. It would never be published and thus only existed in her mind. The title: Three Times Alya Suspected Ladybug Might Be Into Her… And One Time Ladybug Confirmed She Knew.

One. The Constant Touches.

Alya didn’t need to see fan photos to notice Ladybug was touchy. When Ladybug arrived on the scene, she would announce her presence with a palm at the middle of Alya’s back and a whispered, “Hey, what’d I miss?”

When she talked Alya through her gameplans, Ladybug would clutch her shoulders and lean in almost nose-to-nose. Her ideas were brilliant and her blue eyes were intense and Alley Cat could do little but nod dumbly.

At the end of each battle, Ladybug would say, “Well done!” and leap into Alley Cat’s arms for a tight embrace, genuinely proud of her. It was more affectionate than she had been with Chat Noir, much to the despair of Ladynoir shippers. On the thread Plagg showed her, they insisted it was only because Alley Cat was a girl that Ladybug felt more comfortable being touchy-feely.

But there was Two. The Laughter.

Their senses of humor clicked together instantly. On a good day, they would giggle together almost constantly. On a great day, one or both of them would at some point laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe. When she lit up with laughter, she was so pretty Alya didn't know what to do with herself. The first time she made Ladybug laugh with a joke, Alley Cat got so flustered that she apologized. But somewhere along their first three encounters with each other, they had already established inside jokes. When akumas said something particularly dumb, they shared quiet, knowing smiles. Alya could mutter the words “Same hat,” at any moment by themselves and Ladybug would dissolve into silent quakes of laughter.

Alya particularly enjoyed the way Ladybug supplied cat puns for her. One night, they faced a cheese-themed enemy who left Alley Cat covered with sticky bits of melted mozzarella. She made tiny noises of disgust while peeling it off her suit and grumbled, “I’m really getting sick of cheese these days.”

Ladybug said, “Are you losing your _appurrtite_ for it?”

“Ew!” Alley Cat groaned and flung a bit of cheese at her. “Why are you always making the worst cat puns?”

Ladybug’s hands went to her hips and and she pointed an accusing stare at Alley Cat. “Someone’s gotta do it. I’ve been trying to encourage you to get in the spirit, but you’re not picking up the hints.”

“I don’t think I’m as good at thinking of them as you are, to be honest.”

“Well, I’ve had a lot more exposure to them. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

Alley Cat laughed quietly. “Okay, hints taken. I’ll think of some other catty quirk to do if it makes you happy.”

Next time they met, Alley Cat dove into combat with a loud, drawn out trilling sound. _“Rrrrr!”_

“The hell was that?” said Ladybug.

Alley Cat extended her baton until it hit the akuma victim in the chest, propelling him backwards. “I was purring! It’s like my battle cry kinda thing.”

Ladybug grinned wide and threw her yoyo around him before he could get his bearings. “It sounds like a noise Nicki Minaj makes.”  
  
“Good!”

Alya could laugh about everything and nothing when she was with Ladybug because she’d never been so happy.

Three. The Close Attention.

Ladybug remembered everything about her. Little things Alya mentioned in passing would be constantly brought up in later conversations. She made casual references to Alya’s neighborhood, the school she went to, her friends, her sisters (even by name), favorite foods, favorite comics, music she liked.

Once, an akuma managed to lock them in a trap and threatened to keep them there for six months before delivering them to Papillon. Ladybug made an offhand joke to her. “Good news for you, we’ll be out just in time to celebrate your birthday!”

Alley Cat, about to raise her hand to use Cataclysm, paused. “How come you know my birthday?”

“Ah. Well.” Ladybug became captivated by examining the bars of the trap. “I just remember it being around that time. I saw it on the Ladyblog.”

She must have seen it a long time ago. She still remembered it. The idea that Ladybug had been paying that kind of close attention to Alya even before becoming Alley Cat was… Overwhelming.

Alya plucked up the courage to ask her about it the next time they were alone. She wasn’t Alley Cat in that moment. She used up her Cataclysm during their first clash with Gasolina, an akuma that could transform into any vehicle at will. Alya’s transformation broke before the fight was over and Gasolina managed to speed out of Ladybug’s sight.

Ladybug carried Alya up to a rooftop while they waited for Plagg to recharge. She attempted to say hello to him, but the kwami was too grumpy to converse before he’d been given his cheese. It would be nearly impossible to spot the akuma after she had blended into traffic, so the team had no choice but to kill time until the enemy struck somewhere again. Ladybug flipped open her yo-yo and used it to tune into a police radio. She set it down on the ledge beside her, waiting to hear reports about a car driving straight into a building or something.

Their legs swung over the flat top of a mansard roof, fingers gripping its edges. Plagg belly-flopped across Alya’s lap, dropping cheese crumbs over her jeans. Ladybug sat so close that her arm pressed against Alya’s. She tried to be cool about this, but then Ladybug’s head dropped to Alya’s shoulder in a wordless, possibly thoughtless, action. It was such a _comfortable_ thing to do. A wave of warmth washed over Alya.

“I was scared of doing this,” she confessed.

“Afraid of heights now?”

“No. The entire miraculous thing. Becoming a superhero. Disappointing you.”

“I always knew you’d be good for it.”

Alya couldn’t see Ladybug’s face when she looked down, but she said it as if it were an obvious fact.

“Always? How long?” Alya felt embarrassed at the way her pitch rose from nervousness or excitement or both.

Ladybug’s shoulders rubbed against Alya’s arms in a gentle shrug. “You’ve been doing reckless, stupid things for my attention since the day I became Ladybug.”

“You probably thought I was a creep.”

Alya looked down at her sneakers, dangling ten floors above the sidewalk. _Was?_ If anything, her infatuation had grown exponentially worse with every moment she spent alongside Ladybug. Ladybug had to know. She had to know Alya was a desperate idiot aiming far too high with her affections.

“Nah. You were relentlessly supportive of me, even before I’d given you any reason to be.” Ladybug pulled away and straightened up to look at Alya. “It’s funny you wound up in this position. I’m noticing you always had things in common with Chat Noir.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Plagg chimed in from Alya’s lap. “And you probably thought he was a creep too.”

Ladybug laughed. “Oh, hey. Plagg?”

“Yeah. You know, I like chilling outside of people’s pockets, talking to more than one person at the same time. This open identity stuff is _nice_.” He rose to stretch his little limbs in mid-air and gave Ladybug a coy wink. “You’ve seen Alya’s, now show her yours.”

“ _Plagg_ ,” Alya hissed, only because Ladybug was gaping. She would thank him for the effort later.

“Alya wasn’t _supposed_ to tell me she’s Alley Cat.”

“You basically forced me to tell you.”

“Only because I didn’t know it was you!”

“That’s why I told you!”

“Oh my god,” Plagg groaned. “Stop.”

“I guess I did ask for it.” Ladybug’s lips were pulled tight in a badly restrained smile. It looked goofy and it was melting Alya’s heart.

“I—I would’ve told you even if you didn’t.”

Ladybug’s fingertips came up to gently cup Alya’s chin. “You need to learn to keep secrets if you want to keep being a superhero.”

“I do keep secrets. My best friend would back me up. These lips are airtight once they're sealed,” Alya responded in a flustered rush.

“Yeah, I bet.” Ladybug’s hand withdrew and she looked off to the side, somewhat self-consciously.

Alya’s face was burning and she’d never been so thankful her complexion was too dark to show it. The police radio crackled to life with a report about someone driving straight through an indoor mall.

“Suit up, kittens,” Ladybug said to her and Plagg, springing to her feet.

“Plagg, claws out!”

The transformation washed over her and Alya became acutely aware of Ladybug watching every moment with quiet awe as she became Alley Cat.

“So that’s what it looks like,” Ladybug whispered when it was done.

“Quick question before we go.” Alley Cat took Ladybug’s hand to pull her back onto the roof a split second before jumping away. “You knew I idolized you. Weren’t you worried about not living up to that?”

“Nope.” Ladybug didn’t even need a second to think about it. “Always knew you’d adore me.”

She beamed a wide grin that dissolved all of Alley Cat’s limbs into noodles and beckoned for her to step closer. “Put your arms around my neck.”

Alley Cat complied, equal parts eager and speechless. Ladybug’s arm wrapped around her waist to pull her in against her side before throwing her yo-yo out and swinging off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two minutes after Marinette dropped into her room that night, a tapping at her window nearly made her jump out of her bones. Alya’s sheepish face leaned over her skylight. _Why?_ She was exhausted from tonight’s akuma and now she had to whip out her performance skills.

She kneeled on her mattress to unlatch it and let her friend inside. “Alya?! It’s like three in the morning and you’re on my _roof?_ ”

“Sorry! Some Ladybug stuff ran late and I told my mom I’m staying with you.”

It was interesting to see the ways Alya lied to Marinette now that she had to. Marinette faked absolute gullibility, as if the guilt wasn’t written over Alya’s face every time she avoided going into details. And she made it easier for Alya when she could. “Did Ladybug leave you up here?”

“Yeah…”

“Lucky night for you.”

“You have no idea!”

Alya launched into a recount of their talk on the roof, stumbling over herself a few times when she had to find  a way to leave out references to Plagg or Alley Cat. Marinette smiled and nodded, but mostly tuned out the words. She focused her attention on the breathy elation in Alya’s voice, the way she clutched her chest and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling when she remembered something Ladybug did, the way she cupped her hands over her entire face when she recalled her own reactions earlier. A sense of warm delight bubbled up deep in Marinette’s belly. Alya _adored_ her so thoroughly. Every side of her.

“And then—Oh my god— _And then_ ,” Alya clapped her hands over Marinette’s palms on the bed sheets. “She told me to put my arms around her neck.”

Alya squeezed her hands and made a sound that started out like a tea kettle squeal for about three seconds, then graduated to a deep guttural whine, followed by about five fake sobs as her friend’s head dropped onto Marinette’s shoulder.

Marinette’s shirt stifled her voice. “I thought she was going to kiss me.”

A beat.

“She was stupid not to.”

Alya pulled away, still clutching her hands, and laid a kiss on a tip of Marinette’s nose. Marinette fought the impulse to chase after her mouth when she retreated, then promptly wondered _why that was her first impulse_.

She knew why.

She’d been attracted to Alley Cat the moment she saw her. She thought Alya was attractive before, obviously. She had eyes and her best friend was often in front of them. It was lucky for her that Alya’s eyes were often pointed down at her phone, so she never noticed Marinette staring these days. She was too comfortable with Marinette to feel any tension. And Marinette would rather die single than compromise what they already had by changing their relationship.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up for some mention of blood and injuries in this chapter

Marinette fell asleep with Alya’s forehead resting against the back of her neck. Both exhausted girls knocked out within seconds of closing their eyes. The only sound in the dark was their quiet breathing… and the gentle shift of sliding wood as Marinette’s jewelry box opened. 

Tikki flitted through pools of moonlight until she reached the floor of Marinette’s bedside, where Alya had dumped her bag before pulling the sheets up over both of them. With a swift tug like ripping a bandaid off, she tore the bag’s flap open. She peered inside. Nothing within it stood out in the dark.

“Plagg,” she hissed. “I know you’re in there.”

A few seconds passed, then one green eye opened up in its depths, glowing starkly against the shadows that Tikki’s partner blended seamlessly into. 

“Balcony. Now,” she said, then shot through the roof and emerged in the warm night air. 

Plagg popped up a foot away from her. “Hey.”

“Hey? Is that all you have to say for yourself, hey?” 

“No, it’s just a conversation starter. What’s your problem?” 

“Alley Cat is! What do you think you’re doing with her?”

Plagg twitched his head sideways as though the answer was obvious. “Having fun.”

She gaped for a moment, stunned that this was the best excuse he had. “The miraculous is not for having fun!”

“Oh? Come on, we both know that’s more than a little untrue… It’s mostly fun.” He beamed a mischievous little grin that Tikki did not return.

She spoke to him with slow deliberation. “The ring is not a toy and it wasn’t yours to give away.”

Plagg’s ears flattened back at her words and tone, but he said nothing. She was right about this.

“You know what happens when someone takes a miraculous not meant for them,” Tikki added, unable to believe that he hadn’t considered it himself. “I care too much about Alya to let her risk herself like this.”

One green eye twitched. “Since when are _you_ the pessimist here? Alya’s been risking herself without the ring since day one.”   

“You _have_ to leave the ring with Marinette.”  

Plagg backed away from Tikki. “It's Alya’s choice to use it. We decided together. Maybe you'll find out that's how things should have been done all along.”

 

* * *

 

Ladybug spent patrols in despondent silence. She hadn’t told Alley Cat about patrol yet. She knew Alya had school, housework, the Ladyblog, and watching her sisters to worry about. She kept patrol to herself to save Alya from another duty competing for the little spare time she had. Another reason why identities were better left unknown for them.

Still, the time spent having adventures with her best friend was more than great. So blissful that Ladybug had started feeling an entirely new, equally intense, way about her. Bringing Alya closer was the only thing that kept her from falling apart over the sudden loss of a friend. On patrol, without her there, the emptiness at Ladybug's side hurt more than ever. She had six quiet nights to wonder where Chat Noir was now that he wasn’t Chat Noir. How was he coping? Who was he telling cat puns to now? Could she cross paths with the person she missed most and not even realize it? 

Her yo-yo sounded, wrenching Ladybug out of her thoughts. When she flipped it open, she forgot not to expect Chat Noir’s face on the screen.

“Got a tip on the Ladyblog about an akuma,” Alley Cat said. 

 

* * *

 

Adrien thought a sprained ankle would convince his father to release him from modeling work until it healed. Adrien was wrong. _He will be fine by the time the shoot is scheduled, so they can see him at the audition now,_ said the text he sent to Nathalie when Adrien asked why they were bothering to go.

He was too tired to put up an air of confidence when he limped on crutches into a casting office full of rival models. Some looked at him with pity, others with condescension. The casting assistant directed Adrien to line up beside the last model to arrive before him, a blonde-haired boy fidgeting with his headshot in his hands, and wait to be called. They held the tryout within a sterile room with glass doors and walls. Everyone could see the models auditioning before them take turns doing their runway walk in front of a table of three judges. 

The boy in front of him kept flicking his eyes down toward Adrien’s splint on one foot. On the third time, he realized Adrien was watching him. 

“S—Sorry about your foot. That’s terrible.”

“It’s alright. I don’t actually want the job.”

The other boy’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Who on earth wouldn’t want—”

“Christophe Canet?”

The model made a small jump when his named was called. He gave Adrien a nervous smile before heading in. Through the glass, Adrien watched him do his walk for the judges. He bit his lip when he realized Christophe _forgot to leave his headshot at the table._ Seconds into the walk, the boy visibly startled, perhaps the moment he realized the same thing. He handled it professionally and continued the audition without pausing, despite the sheet in one hand. The middle judge was texting, so perhaps he wouldn’t notice the mistake. He wouldn’t notice anything at all because he didn’t even look up when Christophe finished the walk and paused in front of the table. 

Adrien read the boy’s lips saying, “Should I do it again?”

They dismissed him. Halfway out the door, Christophe gasped. “I forgot to leave my headshot—”

He tried to hand it to the casting assistant, but she said, “Don’t worry about it. Adrien Agreste?”

The model looked devastated. That’s what Adrien imagined failing an audition you actually want must feel like. Devastating. He shared a faint smile with the other boy before passing through. Hopefully, a comforting one. One he hoped would say, _Don’t worry, mine is going to go way worse._

And it did, right off the bat. Adrien lumbered to the table at the center of the room and handed his headshot to one of the side judges. The middle one put his phone down at last and Adrien recognized him. He was the designer of the show’s collection, quite a well known one, and he’d been to their house once or twice. Adrien now understood why his father wouldn’t let him miss this one. He was networking. 

“Good to see you, Adrien,” he said, then darted a concerned look at Adrien’s ankle. “What happened here?”

“I sprained it.”

The two women at the table gave Adrien patient smiles. “Just walk straight through those pillars, honey, then back to us,” one said.

Feeling ridiculous, Adrien tottered up and down the center of the room on his crutches. It took twice as long as it should’ve. At least the judges looked amused more than irritated. 

He ended his pitiful excuse for a runway walk with a laugh and a flat, “Ta-da.”  

“Go ahead and take his measurements,” the designer told the assistant at his side. 

She rose from her seat and beckoned Adrien to the corner of the room.  

 

* * *

 

Ladybug landed on the sidewalk with a rough thud. Perched up on a street lamp, Alley Cat pounced to the pavement at her side. 

“Hey.” Alya’s eyes glowed amber behind her mask and the warmth she looked at Ladybug with was almost palpable. 

Ladybug’s heart, inexplicably, skipped a beat. Inexplicable because she had looked into Alya’s eyes hundreds of times. She had touched Alya hundreds of times, just like the way Ladybug reached out to skim her fingertips over the side of her arm now. 

But it wasn’t completely like the hundreds of times before. A new thrill arose when Marinette was Ladybug and Alya was Alley Cat. Essentially the same, but different in this situation. Your favorite song can come up on your shuffle hundreds and you’ll love it, but hearing it played at a party electrifies you, makes your heart soar. 

_I thought she was going to kiss me,_ Alya had told Marinette.

“Hey,” Ladybug said, keeping her hand there, knowing Alya would think of this touch over and over again later.

“So, I got the photo crew out. The akuma’s gotten a boy who got upset for not getting a modeling job…” Alley Cat launched into an explanation of exactly what caused the situation.

Ladybug fought back a smile at the thought of how hard she must have been trying to play it cool. A valiant attempt, although Alley Cat made no efforts whatsoever to hide how much she adored Ladybug. In that sense, she wasn’t much different from Chat Noir. Ladybug wondered if casual, friendly touches had lingered with him too. The smile died on her lips.

“... all because Adrien Agreste didn’t even _want_ the job and still got chosen over—Are you alright?” 

Not at all. Ladybug shook her feelings off as best she could until this was taken care of. “Yeah. Where’s Adrien Agreste now?”

She marched into the building with Alley Cat close behind. 

“I snuck him out with his manager lady. The akuma’s tearing the studio apart looking for them.”

“Good girl.” Ladybug didn’t need to look back to know it made the companion behind her _beam_.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t hard to find Dreaditorial. Just follow the crashes. Everything beneath Adrien's right knee burned with pain. He hobbled in the direction of the deafening sounds, trying to stay in the shadows where neither the akuma victim nor Nathalie would see him. At this point, he was less afraid of the monster catching him than Nathalie after he’d snuck away from her.

After reaching the second floor and turning the right corner, he found them. The akuma victim wielded a thick, metal tripod with a camera at its end that he swung like a club. Adrien watched Alley Cat try to parry a blow with the staff—bad idea. Dreaditorial slammed his tripod into her weapon with enough force to break her wrists if she weren’t wearing the suit. Her feet slid backwards and she lost stance, then the flash went off from the camera at the end of the tripod, right in Alley Cat’s eyes. It could’ve been a fatal mistake, but Ladybug swung in right on time to pull the enemy away from her while she recovered.  

For a moment, Adrien forgot that he’d come here to help. He watched them, mesmerized. The girls worked together in perfect tandem to avoid Dreaditorial’s heavy strikes, in sync in a way Adrien thought was special to him.

Ladybug’s yoyo wrapped around the victim’s wrists to hold them back and Alley Cat went for the tripod.

“Bet your butterfly’s in the camera. Cataclysm!” She wrapped her hand around the camera at the weapon’s head and it disintegrated through her fingers with a crunch. The rest of the tripod fell to pieces with it.

Nothing fluttered out of it, though. Alley Cat gave Dreaditorial a wide-eyed look. “Well, at least you’re disarmed.”

“Think that's all I got? You haven't even seen my walk.” He stomped one foot on the floor. 

It started as a soft rumble that mounted into an ear-splitting _crack_. The ground split open, tearing the room in half and collapsing everything in Dreaditorial’s path. Adrien was far enough away to back away from the cave in, but the heroines were not. They fell straight through, down to the first floor. 

“Ladybug!” Alley Cat shrieked down below somewhere. 

Adrien staggered to the edge of the second floor hanging over them to see Alley Cat shoving aside shattered beams of metal and lumps of broken concrete. Ladybug wriggled beneath the rubble. She didn't see Dreaditorial prowling up behind them.

“Hey!” Adrien shouted and slid down a caved in piece of the floor that made a decent ramp down. 

He fumbled at the bottom and dropped his crutches. With a hiss of pain, he rolled to his back. Dreaditorial stood over him, god, he was fast. Adrien pushed himself halfway up to his feet, but a jolt of pain stabbed through his hand, and he fell again. He looked at his palm. A shard of glass was embedded right in the middle of its sensitive flesh. The white floor was covered in glass. Adrien recognized it as the audition room from earlier. 

“You’re so lucky,” the akuma victim growled at him, low and venomous. “Everyone looks at you like you fell out of a hole in the sun.”

Dreaditorial crouched down to pick up a long sliver of thick glass. He took a step toward Adrien with it raised, then faltered. The outline of a pink mask materialized around his face. 

“No—You promised I could—” He pleaded with the empty air in front of him, then hissed and clutched his head. 

Adrien scrambled backwards to create distance between them, whimpering beneath his breath as glass pricked his hands and poked through his jeans. His gushing palm left a trail of red across the floor. 

“NO,” Dreaditorial bellowed, eyes clenched shut behind the pink mask and every muscle trembling, fighting back against an invisible pain inflicted on him. 

With the last of his strength, he raised one foot and stomped. Adrien watched the crack slither straight toward him, growing wider every second as the ground tore open. He pushed himself onto his feet and dove out of its path. He avoided being swallowed by the ground, breathed a sigh a relief, then heard an ominous rumble. He whipped his head around, searching for the source. The pillars in the audition room were toppling over, slow and heavy. 

Adrien tried to run away from it, hit the ground so hard his teeth rattled, managed to haul himself up and roll clear at the last second. The first pillar crashed less than a foot away from him. But there was more than one. The second pillar descended on him and everything snapped into black stillness.

The sound of his ring chiming woke him. Heavy eyelids struggled to flutter open. Blurry shapes, one red and one black, crouched on either side of him. They heaved, making strained sounds of exertion, and he felt a weight lift from his legs. Alley Cat, slowly coming into focus, jammed his staff beneath the square pillar to prop it up. Another pair of arms scooped Adrien up by the armpits and dragged him out from underneath it. In the same movement, they shoved him against Alley Cat’s chest, grabbed his forearms, and looped them around her neck. He cried out as sensation, unfortunately, returned to his body.  

“Get him out of here before your transformation breaks,” Ladybug ordered, voice trembling. 

“The headshot—The akuma—” Adrien blurted, struggling to string thoughts together coherently through the pain. “I know where it is—In his picture.”

Ladybug released his arms and tucked a chunk of hair clinging to his sweaty cheek behind his ear. “I’ve got this. I’ll fix you,” she promised him.

Alley Cat lifted him off his feet, hooked her hands beneath his knees, and whispered a constant stream of “Sorry, sorry!” beneath his hisses and whimpers as she ran off. Over her shoulder, he caught one last glimpse of Ladybug roping her yo-yo around Dreaditorial’s neck and slamming him to the ground. He’d almost forgotten how fearsome she could be when upset.

Alley Cat pushed through an emergency exit with one shoulder, out into the dark parking lot of the studio—When her time limit passed. A blaze of green right in Adrien’s face blinded him. Spots still blinked in his vision as she gingerly knelt to place him on the ground. If she ran away, he wouldn’t be able to chase her. His only chance to know, and he would’ve missed it by a hair.

But she didn’t run. She stayed with him. 

“I’m so _sorry_ ,” Alya said. 

Plagg collapsed on Adrien’s lap. “Me too.”

Adrien’s mouth fell open, unable to form words. A wave of ladybugs washed over the building behind them, repairing it, and across Adrien’s legs, undoing whatever situation he’d been afraid to look at down there. The pain in his palm and the red stains over his clothes disappeared. Alya made a noise of relief somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, and reached out to touch his legs.

“She did it! It’s all gone!” She clutched his knee and shook it in amazement.

“ _Ow_ ,” Adrien complained. “Ankle’s still sprained.”

Alya snapped her hand away as if he’d burnt her. “Sorry.”

Adrien looked at her hand. She wore one plain silver band ring on it. “You turned it inside out. You had the ring this entire time and I didn’t—I—” He looked at Plagg in his lap, completely spent. “You were with her this whole time? You were _right there_ every time I saw Alya and you didn’t say _a thing_ to me, didn’t give me a sign—”

Plagg’s ears dropped. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that to me, both of you,” Adrien snapped. “I thought you were my friends and you—you just—replaced me.”

“It was a mistake,” Alya said softly, folding her hands in her lap.

“You didn’t accidentally take my ring, not you of all people. You knew exactly what you wanted.”

“I didn’t take it _by_ mistake. Taking it _was_ the mistake.” Her eyebrows sunk low and she wrung her hands. Then said, “Here.”

She took his ring off her finger and held it out. 

“Alya, why?” Plagg asked. 

“Ladybug doesn’t need me, look, she fixed this on her own. A column fell on Adrien because of _me_. Nothing like this ever happened to any civilian when he was Chat Noir. I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m going to get people hurt.” She was losing composure, barely pausing for breaths between statements. “I was selfish.”

Although Adrien had thought these things about Alley Cat a hundred times himself, hearing Alya’s voice quake when she said it about herself made his heart twinge. She opened her mouth to go on, but a _clack, clack, clack_  on pavement cut her off. Adrien snatched the ring from Alya’s open palm just as Nathalie called his name. 

“Adrien! What was that stunt you pulled?” 

“I’m fine,” he answered quickly. “Just wanted to see Ladybug.”

Alya sprung to her feet and helped Adrien lift himself from the floor. He slipped the ring into his pocket. Plagg had already darted out of sight. Nathalie stopped with arms crossed, eyes flicking between him and Alya. Gorille was following, not far behind.

“Ladybug,” she said, unimpressed, “is also why you sprained your ankle that night.”

She didn’t phrase it as a question. Alya looked at Adrien with wide eyes. He didn’t say anything.

“Where are your crutches?” Nathalie asked without a trace of concern. 

“Um.”

“Thrilling. Gorille, take him to the car.”

Like a human baton, Alya passed Adrien to Gorille’s steady, effortless grip in awkward silence. They didn’t say bye. Adrien didn’t know _what_ to say. Gorille steered him away and over his shoulder he heard Nathalie say to Alya, “Keep Adrien out of your Ladybug business from now on.”


End file.
